Fatigue (The Therapist’s)
At a glance
A therapist’s own tiredness, heaviness, or sleepiness arising during or after a session with a particular client.
What it might mean
Sometimes genuine countertransference — a felt resonance with a client’s own exhaustion, or an unconscious response to material that’s hard to metabolise. Sometimes it’s simply the therapist’s own tiredness, entirely unrelated to the client, showing up in the room they happen to be occupying at that moment.
Why the distinction matters here specifically
A therapist working with a client managing chronic fatigue or an energy-limiting condition needs to be especially careful not to misread their own ordinary tiredness as a meaningful resonance with the client’s condition — doing so risks centring the therapist’s experience inside a session that’s actually about the client’s.
Working with it
Check the obvious, unglamorous explanations first — how much sleep, how many sessions today, general workload — before reaching for a clinical interpretation. If those don’t account for it, it may be worth exploring further, ideally in supervision rather than assumed silently.
A question worth carrying
Is there an ordinary explanation for this tiredness that has nothing to do with this particular client?
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Fatigue, Rest & Embodiment · Body-Centred Countertransference · The Therapist’s Body